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Top aides to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign hit back at Sarah Palin Friday, after news reports revealed that the former vice presidential nominee’s soon-to-be-released book criticizes the campaign’s press strategy.
AP Photo

Campaign manager Steve Schmidt, who emerges as Palin’s nemesis in the advance excerpts that have surfaced from her forthcoming account of the campaign, “Going Rogue,” told POLITICO Saturday that Palin's charges about him were made up.

"It's all fiction," he said.

With a laugh, the shaved-headed political operative asked: "Why is the bald guy always the villain?"

Schmidt, Palin writes, was “grim-faced” and “cool,” and tried to pin the campaign’s troubles on what he claimed was Palin’s post-partum depression, and even went to so far as to try and dictate her diet.

According to excerpts published on the Huffington Post, Palin “took in his rotund physique and noted that he used nicotine to keep his own cognitive connections humming along.”

“I'm a forty-four year old, healthy, athletic woman raising five kids and governing a large state, I thought as his words faded into a background buzz. Sir, I really don't know you yet. But you've told me how to dress, what to say, who to talk to, a lot of people not to talk to, who my heroes are supposed to be and we're still losing. Now you're going to tell me what to eat?”

A top McCain strategist familiar with the exchange over Palin's appearance said that Schmidt and campaign manager Rick Davis approached the vice presidential nominee about the matter because people on her plane were concerned about her weight loss.

"We told her that her health came first and offered to get her a nutritionist," said the strategist.

More generally, Palin uses the book to note the “jaded aura” of the "professional political caste" guiding McCain:

"But I did notice... funny things [about the handlers] that even Piper commented on — such as tumbling out of the bus in a pack, lighting cigarettes as they went so it looked like a walking smoke cloud with legs."

Palin also faults Schmidt for his penchant for profanity, writing that he warned her just before the vice-presidential campaign that “moderator Gwen Ifill is "going to f*** with you."

"I'm thinking, Why are you telling me this? Last minute... what's the point? And no more f-bombs around Piper, please?"

According to excerpts from copies obtained by media outlets, Palin charges that the staffers assigned to her by McCain’s team blocked her from speaking to the press aboard the campaign plane. And she asserts that former McCain communications aide Nicole Wallace ‘pushed’ her to do a September 2008 interview with CBS’s Katie Couric that resulted in serious damage to the former Alaska governor’s image.

“Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press,” Palin wrote, according to an excerpt that appeared Friday on the Drudge Report website. “At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, [campaign aides] Tracey [Schmitt] or Tucker [Eskew] would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, ‘No! Absolutely not—block her if she tries to go back.’”

Let's see...who do I believe? Ms. Palin or the dunderheads who ran the absolute worst presidential campaign since Walter Mondale in 1984. No campaign staffer who worked with McCain should ever be allowed to work on another Republican campaign EVER!

Sarah is the female Ann Coulter with looks and no brains....and she is a liar on every issue and fact that has crossed her path. No wonder her hubby did not believe her denials about making the two-backed beast with his business partner.

“Aboard the campaign plane I was within twenty-five feet of reporters for hours on end. Headquarters’ strategy was that I should not go to the back of the aircraft and talk to the press,” Palin wrote, according to an excerpt that appeared Friday on the Drudge Report website. “At first this was subtle, but as the campaign wore on, [campaign aides] Tracey [Schmitt] or Tucker [Eskew] would call headquarters to request permission, and someone in DC would respond, ‘No! Absolutely not—block her if she tries to go back.’”

It is the McCain campaign's fault, all of it. Picking this woman in a petty and obvious ploy to pick up the ignorant masses of FOX watching, gun toting bible banging conservative whites-only base was the error.

They gave this fool woman a national platform, now it's biting them in the ass. They wouldn't have had to try and keep her from answering "trick" questions like "what do you read" if they hadn't picked a moron in the first place.

Now America has to tolerate this woman and her greedy cash grab BS until her fad status is gone. Meanwhile, Palin is smarty enough to know shhe can milk this cash cow until it's dry, then hop on over to join beck on FOX and spew more stupidity to sate the uneducated masses that follow her.

They said those lawsuits would get her, Ha Ha. They said she was getting a divorce, Ha Ha. At this point the wee-weeing is on: Full. Blast..... Maybe you libs just should just turn off your TV's for the next month and stop posting on web sites before you have a cardiac! ROFLOL

It is the McCain campaign's fault, all of it. Picking this woman in a petty and obvious ploy to pick up the ignorant masses of FOX watching, gun toting bible banging conservative whites-only base was the error.

They gave this fool woman a national platform, now it's biting them in the ass. They wouldn't have had to try and keep her from answering "trick" questions like "what do you read" if they hadn't picked a moron in the first place.

Now America has to tolerate this woman and her greedy cash grab BS until her fad status is gone. Meanwhile, Palin is smarty enough to know shhe can milk this cash cow until it's dry, then hop on over to join beck on FOX and spew more stupidity to sate the uneducated masses that follow her.

They said those lawsuits would get her, Ha Ha. They said she was getting a divorce, Ha Ha. At this point the wee-weeing is on: Full. Blast..... Maybe you libs just should just turn off your TV's for the next month and stop posting on web sites before you have a cardiac! ROFLOL

Explaining the campaign’s decision to limit press access as Election Day drew closer, Salter said that “after we had been criticized in the press for a lack of disciplined messaging earlier in the campaign when we provided frequent and unscheduled access to the candidate, we felt it necessary to adopt the same deliberativeness and discipline employed by our opponents and rely less on impromptu press conferences with our traveling press, and more on interviews arranged in advance so our candidates would have the same opportunity our opponents enjoyed to discuss and prepare for the interview.”

In other words.........

If she didn't suck at it the first 10 times,....then maybe she could have talked to the press on the plane......

But it's not Sarah's fault that she sucks,.....It's everybody else's..........

They said those lawsuits would get her, Ha Ha. They said she was getting a divorce, Ha Ha. At this point the wee-weeing is on: Full. Blast..... Maybe you libs just should just turn off your TV's for the next month and stop posting on web sites before you have a cardiac! ROFLOL